If you love Ah Boy’s to Men by Jack Neo, you’ll probably be excited for his next movie

I’m sure every Singaporean would know about local director and producer, Jack Neo. Most of our childhood probably involve watching his local movies, Homerun (跑吧！孩子), I Not Stupid (小孩不笨) and Liang Po Po (梁婆婆). Ah, those were the days.

Nevertheless, he is still constantly working hard in the entertainment industry, directing movies for audience of all ages to see. 

After the rise of Ah Boys to Men which everybody love, his upcoming movie won’t be circulating around NS men but towards ex-convicts and their struggle with society, looking for a 2nd chance in life.

The show will be starring well-known and well-liked actors including Maxi Lim from Ah Boys To Men, Ryan Lian from Long Long Time Ago, Gadrick Chin, a malaysian comedian and famous getai actor, Wang Lei, Singapore comedians actors, Mark Lee and Henry Thia.

Aren’t you looking forward to these stars portraying as ex-convicts already? You just know you’re be in for a good laugh during the movie.

Wang Lei also mentioned that he immediately agreed when he heard about the role as it felt similar to his own life’s experience. With an aim to inspire others, he feels like it will allow him to tell a story of his own about his past and how he have changed.

Image: channelnewsasia.com

His latest project – Take 2, will have him taking a back seat and grooming local writer Ivan Ho to make his directorial debut. Working for quite a while alongside Jack Neo, Ivan is a collaborator and has helped write many scripts including Ah Boys To Men and Long Long Time Ago.

Though he’s taking a role in being an executive producer instead of his usual spot as a director this time round, Jack Neo said that he’s planning to be more active and aims to be on the set everyday. He wants to help Ivan Ho out as much as he can and will be there to provide advice without being too hands-on  as he knows that Ivan will have to develop his own style of directing.

According to Channel News Asia, Ivan said that as a first-time director, he expects a lot of challenges and knows that his experience would be different from Jack Neo. He mentioned that he won’t be as quick as Jack Neo but he’s excited and has learnt a lot from the years that the pair had worked together.

When interviewed, the new director said that the best advice that Jack Neo had given him is “pressure to do well”. When asked the worst advice, the two replied “also pressure” with a laugh. When asked about locals joining the film industry, he insisted that he believes that growing in the industry should start from the inside hence, encouraging Ivan to step up to take on a director role from his usual script-writing.

He also mentioned that training is important and said that we should start training and promoting people from inside of the industry before looking elsewhere as they need more commercial directors in Singapore’s film industry.

With a budget of S$1.5 million, the production between Jack Neo’s J Team Productions and mm2 Entertainment will start filming on Thursday (23rd June 2016) and the filming is expected to end by end of July or early August.

Seemingly like they have really good chemistry and rapport based on a professional yet friendly working relationship, we’re looking forward to the upcoming comedy-drama film, Take 2, that will be released during the 2017 Chinese New Year already.

This article was first published on goodyfeed.com